1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to digital rights management (DRM). More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for defining and enforcing rules of transition between two security domains.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital contents have gained wide acceptance in the public. Such contents include, but are not limited to: movies, videos, music and the like. As such, many consumers and businesses have digital media devices and/or systems that enable the reception of such digital multimedia contents via various communication channels, e.g., via a wireless link such as a satellite link or a wired link such as cable connections and/or telephony based connections such as DSL and the like.
Irrespective of the communication channels that are employed to receive the digital contents, owners of digital contents and the service providers (e.g., a cable service provider, a telecommunication service provider, a satellite-based service provider, merchants and the like) who provide such digital contents to subscribers or users are concerned with the protection of such digital contents. To illustrate, a service provider may receive a request from a user to download a movie for immediate viewing or to be stored on a storage device for later viewing. Certainly, the movie can be encrypted and forwarded electronically to the user. However, technologies related DRM usually only describes the control of the digital content once it is in the user's domain. The delivery of the content, and protecting it securely from the delivery (either broadcast or singlecast) to the end user and future management is often not addressed.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for defining and enforcing rules of transition between two security domains.